On Thursday 24 May a small contingent of St John’s members were delighted to attend the opening of a mobile community education centre which has been built and installed at Glen Taylor School. This amazing facility has been concepted, developed and personally funded by Dr Sharad Paul, one of our clubs Honorary Members.
Sharad has been running literacy programmes in schools for over a decade and personally visiting low-decile schools to teach creative-writing and also to build school libraries. He ran a bookstore (Baci Lounge) and while this was in operation, he used the bookstore to support these ventures.
For Dr Sharad, it is obvious that poor education and poor health have common denominators, so for some time he has wanted to run additional community education classes on good eating and healthy choices for pupils at school, and their families. The program will target parents and primary school children and is a first of its kind. It will run from the “mobile community education centre” with Glen Taylor School being “stoked” to be the host primary school for this centre. Sharad hopes the concept will spread to other schools over time.
Hosted by Principal, Chris Herlihy – the event started with an official ribbon cutting ceremony and a quick tour of the new “centre”. Guests and visitors were then treated to a performance from the “World Famous is Glen Innes – Pacific Pearls”. This was followed with a brief but extremely enlightening educational session on Healthy eating (from Dr Sharad) and then a delicious meal prepared by renowned chef, Jinu Abraham.
We wish Sharad all the best with this new venture and look forward to receiving his updates on this outstanding community initiative.